Thursday, 30 April 2015

This is a band to definitely check out, beginning here perhaps on its latest website where you can get background information as well as listen to some of their infectious music.

On their Facebook page you can hear their latest, Wild Child, a superb reggae infused song that exemplifies the excellence of the songwriting and the performance.

This is a band that has survived and evolved in a tough world of mass music and where the mediocre but lucky sometimes get the breaks and those with talent keep working hard for the same. Founding member, guitarist and main songwriter Harry Birch continues to impress with the quality of his and the band's work.

I don't feel compelled to explain, but have a slight internal nudge. I do enjoy the planned search for themed album covers, in spare moments [this will cease soon with the exam season imminent], but I also like the surprises - and there are weirdly many - like these that barked at me from sudden places.

I even get the punning verbs in. Oh the whole process.

I have retained the opening cover with a human in attendance as the title seemed apt.

This was an exquisite gig, Sam Lee and Friends playing a
solo set [no support] in two wonderful segments. There were songs from Lee’s
first album Ground of its Own,
reviewed here, and from his recent second, The
Fade in Time, reviewed here.

This is folk music at its most traditional and modern,
nothing paradoxical in the re-presenting of songs Lee searches out and learns
from the gypsy/traveling community largely across the British Isles and then
translates through contemporary arrangements to continue their transmission
beyond the oral/sung tradition that would otherwise diminish over time. Even if
that tradition could survive, Lee and Friends are introducing this to a new and
wider audience, and we are privileged to receive.

The contemporary arrangements I mention are themselves
rooted in tradition and modernity – courting contradiction again – but this is
embraced by the instruments used and the interpretations played. Sam Lee himself
on shruti box, when playing it, provides an amplified resonance of sound as it
pulses beneath melodies; Jon Witten on Mongolian dulcimer taps out delicate
soundscapes, provides plaintive to upbeat backdrops on electric piano, and
plucks and strums on ukulele; acclaimed violinist Flora Curzon provides
beautiful defined melodic lines as well as deeply atmospheric strokes, and
percussionist Josh Green delivers both touch and considerable energy through his
various rhythms, including the range of a tabla tone to a booming on his bass gourd.

I stress the above to celebrate this dynamic band but also
because on record with, for example, the addition of jazzy trumpet and other,
the arrangements are expansive and full of depth when complementing the traditional
songs. It was natural to wonder how this would be matched in a live set with a
smaller collective, but the performance was as refined to powerful as on record.
For example, Jonny O’ The Brine which
opens Lee’s latest album is on record full of trumpet and effects; live at the
Phoenix it was as fulsome in the energy and volume produced on stage – Green’s
driving beat contributing considerably here.

Sam Lee’s vocal is majestic: sonorous clarity perhaps best
describing, though it quite simply has to be heard. There is an excellent
article on Sam here which provides huge detail about his life growing up and
the passion now for seeking out and archiving on record and in performance the
songs he sings. Sam himself informs us of elements of this at the gig, for
example, when explaining the personal significance of a song like Jews Garden that is played, and the
background story to the beautiful ballad The
Moon Shone on My Bed Last Night, also played. Other gems performed often with
background stories – well, every single song shone – were The Ballad of George Collins, Bonny
Bunch o’ Roses, Moorlough Maggie, Phoenix Island, Airdog, and the sweet Lovely Molly which was sung a cappella,
sans microphones, as an encore.

If you can catch Sam Lee and friends on tour, you absolutely
must. It goes without saying you must also buy his/their records.

Wednesday, 29 April 2015

I've just read a scathing allmusic review of this 2nd album by British blues band Chicken Shack, having listened to it earlier this evening. It is a fairly ordinary rather than exceptional blues offering, and Stan Webb's attempts at comedy between the songs is hardly fall-over funny, but it was one of the first albums I owned, I thought the comic voices/personas were amusing then, and every song triggers memories now because I knew them so well in '69 [or whenever I actually first had], so fuck allmusic who are usually and otherwise very reliable.

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

It does look increasingly likely there will be a coalition government here in the UK some time after the 7th May, and after the negotiations: let's hope the birth of this new alliance will indeed be more progressive and purposeful then the withering one we have suffered over the last five years, especially led by the two Cs.

Having posted yesterday on Omaha Streak I was immediately reminded [though had forgotten up until now for this running 'Nebraska' theme] the famous Omaha Steaks from the town of my birth. I will have eaten steak there as a young boy, though I don't know if this will have been named, and I have sent Omaha Steaks to my dad as birthday presents on and off over the years [via Amazon, who else....]. With the world's second largest cattle stockyard [I think still] it isn't surprising that beef is such an intrinsic part of the city.

Chateaubriand - a proper gluttony of meat which I have only had once [shared with a friend] in Manchester!

Sunday, 26 April 2015

Don't know the band but this thread has often been about discovery: 311 got their name after band member Jim Watson was caught for streaking [or skinny dipping by another source] in Omaha and was arrested under the local police code 311 for indecent exposure. The band members are from Omaha, so it was an indigenous revelation.

No picture of incident, so band will have to do [sans Jim who left in '91, not presumably for that alfresco infraction].

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This blog is essentially for music reviews, including live gigs. Frequently heavy on 60s/70s nostalgia, the time of my musical growing-up, there is also an eclectic and contemporary range. In addition I fuel a commitment to posting themed album covers for the simple challenge and fun of it - as I've started, I'll keep going. Enjoy.